These pelicans need their privacy

Leia Larsen/Standard-Examiner

Adam Brewerton, a biologist with Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, nets juvenile pelicans Tuesday. Gunnison Island is home to one of the largest breeding colonies of American White Pelicans in North America, which specifically select the site for its inhospitality and seclusion.

By LEIA LARSENStandard-Examiner

OGDEN, Utah (AP) – Gunnison Island lies in the part of the Great Salt Lake where the salt is so thick, bacteria have turned the water lavender.

It’s only six miles from the mainland, but the strange colors make the island seem otherworldly – soupy amethyst waters, snow-white salt beaches, black rock and cerulean sky. It’s a land that’s proved inhospitable to humans. There’s no shade, no water and very few plants. Still, life thrives. Gunnison Island is home to one of the largest breeding colonies of American White Pelicans in North America, which specifically select the site for its inhospitality and seclusion.

An event July 15 offered a rare occasion to see the colony up close. For two days each year, officials with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources and a motley team of bird-enthusiast volunteers make the trip by boat, banding hundreds of young birds by hand. Their goal is to band 250 birds in two hours with only about 30 people.

The state owns the island and has permanently closed it to tourists to further preserve the nesting birds’ solitude. As a state wildlife management area, the island also gives bird researchers an important insight into pelicans’ habits, although they mostly monitor the colony by aerial surveys.

There’s still plenty left to learn, which is where the banding and boat trip come into play. Space is limited, and it’s highly coveted among bird researchers, even if it means grueling work.

True to the lake’s reputation, the smell is putrid. It’s only enhanced at Gunnison Island by the droppings left by many thousands of pelicans and gulls. The researchers work through the stink and heat under a sweltering July sun to wrangle juvenile birds into pens, catch them and restrain them. Even as juveniles, the pelicans are as large as full-grown turkeys, and they put up a decent fight.

The color banding project is all about timing. There’s a limited window between when the juvenile birds are too young to band and when they’re old enough to just fly away when scientists try to catch them. There’s also a small daily window to round up the young birds. Adults catch morning airstreams to hunt fish at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge 30 miles to the north. The fish their parents bring are the juveniles’ only source of food and water. Adults are often gone hunting for days. If the parent pelicans return while researchers are still tagging, their young won’t get fed, and they may not survive the harsh landscape.

Perhaps more importantly, the research also provides information on the birds’ interaction with human populations. The Salt Lake International Airport has thrown a large chunk of funding into the pelican banding project to better understand their movement and reduce strikes with aircraft. With information they gather from Gunnison Island, the airport will develop a pelican-management plan.

The harsh environment will still claim plenty of the young birds before they’re ready to fly south. According to John Luft, Great Salt Lake ecosystem program manager for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, the colony’s pelicans have a nesting success rate of about only 25 percent. Hungry gulls often snatch eggs and very young chicks. Other juveniles face starvation, thirst and injury. Drought and a changing climate could bring even more threats.

“We’ve been figuring, with the lake level dropping, it would create a land bridge,” Luft said. “Once you have one coyote come in there, it pretty much wipes out the whole colony.”

For now, the island continues to successfully harbor a stable population of pelicans, usually between 6,000 to 12,000 nesting adults, although he said surveys have found as many as 20,000. The first human to explore the island, Howard Stansbury, noted “immense flocks” of the birds in 1852. Those numbers took a dive during the decades people tried to make a living on the island harvesting bird guano in the 1870s. Pelicans apparently only paid visits then, but nesting populations immediately jumped back to the thousands once humans abandoned their economic efforts, leaving the austere, rocky island to the birds.

“That’s how you can tell how important it is for them to be in a place that isn’t susceptible to disturbance,” Luft said. “They’re willing to risk not being very successful on their nests just so they don’t have people pestering them. Or other mammals. Or predators.”